Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Health Services and Indigenous Health) Share this | Hansard source

It is a particularly good day to be debating this motion from the government, a day when the Courier Mail ran the banner headline 'Time to stop the waste'. With that, it focused my mind on why I am here this week. Those in my electorate in south-east Queensland are finding it really tough because of a 63 per cent increase in the cost of power and water. Families in my electorate know the challenge of making ends meet. It is in that context that we have to be very cautious about the way we approach motions like this lest we appear to not be focusing on things that are of concern to our constituents. Mums in my electorate have told me about the tough choices they have to make about whether they can afford to put their kids through swimming lessons. And there are those who went to Woolworths and found that loaves of bread were two for $6 and had to ask, 'If I give you $3, will you give me one of those loaves?' We know that 80,000 people have turned up to Salvo services around the country this year who have not done so before. When we notice that the people of Australia are struggling with cost-of-living pressures and we are focusing our attention on the expenditure of government money on the things that really matter, we must be very careful not to be too celebratory about some websites.

I do not deny that there are one or two benefits from these websites. It should not be forgotten that the My School website was cultivated through the Howard government years and thwarted at every step by the unions and by the then Labor opposition. And the only practical benefit for ordinary people from the My Child website and the My Hospital website—and it should be noted that four per cent of Australians have looked at the My Child website and a slightly larger number have looked at the My Hospital website—is the fuel dial graphic that shows the long waiting lists and compares state averages. The practical reality is that people have very little choice about what public health services they access. In most cases, they access the public service to which their GP has referred them. So the idea that one can look at what is happening in other states, regions and even the far corners of the country to find, say, a slightly shorter waiting list for varicose vein removal is of intellectual fascination for those of us in this Committee but of almost nil practical benefit for the ordinary person who in reality will be guided by their GP as to where to have their operation.

I do not want to spend too much time on the individual policy errors of this government, but I will relate an incident in Boston when I was sitting in the back of a taxi that was being driven by a Haitian. He heard my accent and said: 'You're Australian. You have that female Prime Minister.' I said, 'That's right.' He said: 'She said before the election no carbon tax and straight after it she is talking about one. She has signed her political obituary.' I sat there stunned. As members in this place, we will be remembered by that extraordinary duplicity. That is why we have to be very careful that we do not focus on the next policy initiative that follows things like Fuelwatch, the set-top box program or the pink batts—and I will not go into the details of that. These simple things have become examples of extraordinary excess and waste. Is government largesse better than simply writing a cheque? As the Courier Mail pointed out today, 'Writing a cheque for families for $560 and saying "Would you like the cheque or would you like the website?"' I'll take the cheque. But you did not give them a chance on the other side of the chamber. That decision was made on their behalf, how to spend their money. And so we have these dilemmas of 260 childcare centres that mums genuinely wanted but will never be built.

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